LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'."
Clicked the link, wasn't disappointed.
Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
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Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#12The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…
Well, there is some controversy, not considerable. But I think that mostly stems from the fact that no one has been able to decipher it yet.
But computer analysis and all was done recently to strongly suggest this is indeed a script rather than some kind of ornamentation.
Please refer to the following TED talk by one of the scientists who worked on it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_ston...
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#13The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…
Wasn't there a mathematical study that concluded that the Indus script has the structure of a language? I found an article on it http://grimoires.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/grim-writing-the-i...
Ah I didnt see your comment, but I added the TED talk which talks about this in the thread, up above. I hope this doesn't constitute spamming, but here is the link.
http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_ston...
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#14Has anyone got a recommendation for a book on this topic? Amazon is pulling up nothing.
I'm pretty sure that the book and TV series "The Story of India" has a section on the Harappan civilization:
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#15"They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans" It's amazing how quite advanced technologies (for a civilization that thrived from 5000 to 3000 years ago) were mastered only to be lost later over the course of history. A mind-blowing example closer to us is the Antikythera mechanism [1]. Found in a Mediterranean wreck in 1900, the artifact was not analyz…
It's amazing how quite advanced technologies (for a civilization that thrived from 5000 to 3000 years ago) were mastered only to be lost later over the course of history. It's actually not (too) hard to imagine something like this happening again: the process (probably) starts with nuclear weapons and ends with something like A Canticle for Leibowitz : http://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-Jr/dp...
There it is, I have been trying to remember that title for a while.
Not available for the Kindle!?
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#16LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'." Clicked the link, wasn't disappointed.
If you think about it, climate change is actually the most obvious cause for the disappearance of a civilization completely dependent on agriculture.
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#17The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…
Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. "a kind of ornamentation"? Your comment smacks of condescension but I'm sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/…
> You also mentioned the Brahmi script is "unquestionably based on the scripts of the ancient Near East". That is also news to me. Could you provide citations, please?
Brahmi and Karoshthi (the two major origin scripts for the writing systems of the subcontinent) are generally accepted to be related to the Semitic writing systems.
Source: an undergraduate class in writing systems several years ago; also, the relevant Wikipedia pages agree, giving Aramaic as the parent script.
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#18The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…
Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. "a kind of ornamentation"? Your comment smacks of condescension but I'm sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/…
Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing
Yes. Again, this is a familiar issue to people who are familiar with linguistics, and one of the criticisms of the Rao et al. publication is that none of the authors are familiar with the methodology used in historical linguistics to solve comparable problems in other parts of the world. (I am able to read ancient Chinese and am intimately familiar with the history of the Chinese script, which is an illuminating example for comparing periods of early ornamentation, proto-writing, and full writing as that script developed with attested archeological finds.) I am also very familiar with the extent of the Indo-European languages and with the fact that many languages spoken in India (e.g., Tamil, a language spoken by many friends of mine) are not Indo-European. The links I already provided give much of the needed background information.
But here are a few more links, for onlookers who are curious about this issue and may be interested in responses to the Rao et al. publication.
http://www.safarmer.com/Refutation3.pdf
http://www.safarmer.com/more.on.Rao.pdf
http://horadecubitus.blogspot.com/2009/04/indus-what-did-rao...
http://earningmyturns.blogspot.com/2009/04/falling-for-magic...
(The link immediately above is by a former president of the Society for Computational Linguistics.)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/coli_a_00011
(The review article linked above from the journal Computational Linguistics discussed the methodological issues involved.)
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. "a kind of ornamentation"? Your comment smacks of condescension but I'm sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/…
Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing Yes. Again, this is a familiar issue to people who are familiar with linguistics, and one of the criticisms of the Rao et al. publication is that none of the authors are familiar with the methodology used in historical linguistics to solve comparable problems in other parts of the world. (I am able to read ancient Chinese and am intimately famili…
Why did you leave out Rao's rebuttal to Farmer and friends' unabashed ad-hominmen laced pieces that you have given?
Rao's reply in Computational Linguistics: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/IndusCompLing.pdf
Also other articles at: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/IndusResponse.html
Edit 1.
An aside:
Being a logic student who uses probabilistic machine learning, Farmer's use of the words refutation, proof etc. make me despair. This web page is an example:
http://www.safarmer.com/indus/simpleproof.html
Rao is much more careful and nuanced in his methods. Using time-tested logic and math. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/ScienceIndus.pdf
" As clearly stated in the last sentence of the paper, our results provide evidence which, given the rich syntactic structure in the script (and other evidence as listed below), increases the probability that the script represents language."
Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained
#20A similar (but perhaps self-induced fate) may have befallen the Khmer empire in Cambodia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/angkor-seat-of-the...